By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 23 April 2020
Edit Thread
haxxiy said:
SvennoJ said:

Same thing here, initial test with 1,000 patients. Hopefully it helps

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/canadian-clinical-trial-tests-old-plasma-therapy-for-covid-19/

The study is expected to be carried out in every province, and likely each territory. The initial number of people involved is approximately 1,000 patients.

“When people have recovered from COVID-19 infection, we are hoping they will donate a unit of plasma which is essentially the clear portion of blood where all the antibodies are,” said Arnold, an associate professor of medicine and the director of the McMaster Centre for Transfusion Research.


The more places try this the more accurate the results.

I assume there will be some cost versus benefit analysis involved, and this will only be applied to certain severe cases considering the small, but significant risk of graft-versus-host disease that can come with that kind of transfusion.

That being said, the fact that one people can donate their plasma up to three others is an encouraging sign of how strong the immune response to Covid-19 actually is. Perhaps it could last closer to immunity to the original SARS (~ 30 months) than immunity to other coronaviruses (~ 18 months).

You have a lot of anti bodies roaming around your body right after getting over a disease. They say they need people who had actual symptoms and donate their blood within 3 months after they get over it since by then your immune response starts to decrease and fade in the background.

But it could work, more very sick people, also means more recovering people to (hopefully) donate plasma and help out the critical cases. With the other risks involved with these kind of transfusions I guess it will be reserved for those getting near the ventilator stage of the disease.

It won't be a short term fix though

Arnold hopes for a start date within the next few weeks. Once started, results could be shared, ideally, in three or four months, but more realistically in six to 10 months.

“We’re talking about a clinical trial that would normally take at least six to 12 months to set up,” he says. “We’ve worked out the groundwork in about five days with a national team of committed scientists and physicians.”

The article was from April 7th, so perhaps just started now and not really effective to be used until a second wave after Summer.